THE TEACHER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8485, 12 July 1907, Page 7

THE TEACHER.

(By a Teacher.) No. I. * , .■ Thirty-five years ago, when I had •ceased to be a new chum, but still was quite uncertain what place in the colony of New Zealand I might be able to fill, I happened to make the acquaintance of quite a number of taachers. This was in Otago. I iound the teachers of that province—these were the Provincial days--well content with their lot. As a rule, they were paid better superior labourers; they received many presents from their pupils; their acquirements in knowledge were quite moderate; their surroundings were sociable and, next to the minister, mors than respectable and just less than reverential; their status was decidedly superior to that of the tiller of the soil and, on the whole, their lot was enviable. From the ranks of such as these teachers sprang noted men Sir Robert Stout, R. Park, J. Ross, and hosts of others. In those days it meant more than the mere name, to be a teacher. When the provinces were abolished, a change came over the career of the teacher/ With the 1877 Act (Bowen's) those changes came about which have given pleasant occupation to the numerous tinkers in educational matters that each successive Ministry and Parliament hns, since then, .hatched out. Till quite lately the teacher's position became with every Parliament more strenuous, more circumscribed, more penurious, till it appeared in the Atkinson, then Lhe Ballance and finally the early Seddon •Governments, that, to save the country from ruin, the education vote must ever be docked. When I say "docked." I use that term advisedly; for, although, as one of my Parliamentary friends says, it (the educational vote) has been steadily increasing every year, such •a statement is misleading. Votes for Industrial and many other •establishments increase 211 Departmental Education Board Administration, and hundreds of other ways of expenditure have lessened the true educational vote to a deplorable minimum. Taking the educational vote of 1905 as roughly £770.000, the Departmental expenditure of administration by IS Provincial (?) Boards was about 6* per cent., or .£50,050 in all. This percentage does not prima facie appear as great; but it must be here stated that it is practically incidental, that is, tnat it is altogether administrative and must be deducted from the purely "educational vote." Now, considering that so great an annual vote is split up into several branches, each with its ""incidentals" it cannot b£ said that "the "primary educational" portion of that vote is quite adequate to the Trequiremsnts of the primary educational system. The questions then arise;— (1) Why is it not? (2) Who has a grievance and what is it ? (3) How can ■this grievance be remedied? Questions (lj and (3) are not ft, within the scope of my paper—they belong to politicians. Question (2) is what I desire to deal with: —The person who has a grievance, cerberuslike, three-headed, is the teacher. He complains of inadequacy of payment, dack of system in promption, and •sundries. (To be continued.)